How to execute Vim command from shell

Vim can be started just for the purpose of executing one or more Vim commands. This can be done using the -c commandline option to Vim. When one or more of these is provided, Vim is started, then executes these commands first and then renders the edit window.

For example, to open Vim with its internal help documentation:

$ vim -c help

Note how the internal help command is :help and we can drop the colon when using the command option.

To open a file named foo in Vim using this command option:

$ vim -c "e foo"

To open two files named foo and bar in Vim using this command option:

$ vim -c "e foo" -c "e bar"

The above examples are convoluted, since files can be opened directly without using this command option.

Here is a problem that I could solve only using this command option: I update the Vim text spellfile manually and I want to compile the binary spellfile from the shell or from a script. Easy to achieve by calling the command to compile spellfile mkspell and then quit q: